Using Scorched Timber Oxide on my background - Tag 1

The amazing Tim Holtz has just released his final new colour for the distress range. Having received the new Scorched Timber distress ink, distress oxide, distress spray stain, distress oxide spray and watercolour pencil from Susan at Country View Crafts I had to have a play and first checked it's colour tones against some other browns in the range.

 I took a piece of A4 card, cut it down so I could die-cut two tags from it and created a background using both Scorched Timber and Broken China distress oxides.

I smooshed, dipped, dripped and dried several layers and added splatters etc as well. Once I'd cut the tags I chose two mini TH stencils and added some stamping to add more detail. This time I used the distress inks rather than the oxides and blended carefully.

I picked out two photobooth photos and chose these two lovely ladies for this tag.

And finished the collages.

I think the new and yes the last colour in the distress range Scorched Timber is going to be my most favourite brown from the whole set.

Stay tuned for tag 2 which should be along tomorrow.

If you have visited today thanks for stopping by.

xxx

Out of limitations comes creativity - Skype session

Last Friday I had another fabulous skype crafty session with lovely friends Nikki Acton and Alison Bomber.  We have these sessions every now and again where we capitalise on having a longish space of time to work cooperatively together. Our previous encounters have seen us choose the 'next steps' in turn but Nikki pushed us to do something completely different this time. We agreed to work on tags and to collect our materials together first and then allow ourselves the freedom to just create with the limited supplies.

Each of us could pick two things to work with. It went like this - Nikki - 4 colours of paint,  Alison - a stamp set  Brenda - a stencil, Nikki - any item purchased/acquired recently, Alison - 4 colours of ink,  Brenda - your choice of die-cuts/punches. 

We gathered our choices together and showed each other what we had chosen and also agreed we could have a wild card to choose one other thing along the way and each of us could you each others' choices as well as our own. These ended up with Nikki choosing a white posca pen,  Alison chose Words  and I chose rub-ons.

Here were my choices -

Andy Skinner stamps and paints

Tim Holtz dies/die-cuts

And so off we went creating our own masterpieces, deciding our own steps as we went along and  even though we were in lockdown, we could still enjoy each others' company.

I took a few photos straight from the desk, so not the best!

The tags were sealed with the white paint, blended with  grey haze and brayered with mustard seed.

Next I used a palette knife to scrape on titanium white and then mixed some of that with leftover grey haze and splattered it all over before again using the brayer and white.

I used my stencil and created patterns on each tag using different colours and used the stamps also with paint to add more interest

I brayered a little more white, sanded the edges and blended in burnt umber drawing ink.

I took the die-cut wildflowers and used all the paints to create washes to colour them up and I also brayered white over a few of the blooms.

The borders were give the same treatment as the flowers and I die-cut the wreaths from coredinations papers.

As we were coming towards the finishing stage I used words as chosen by Alison and some rub-ons that I chose as my wild card.

We all agreed we could add some twine in the tag holes and once finished I found there was only one thing I didn't use and that was the bird die.

Thank you to both Alison and Nikki for their time and contributions to the day and making it fun to create with each other on video calling.

If you would like to see both their finished tags you can find them here

Nikki

Alison

 Please pop over and leave some love.

xxx

                  

Tag Friday at A Vintage Journey with new Andy Skinner stamp

It's Tag Friday over at A Vintage Journey and at last I have been inspired to make something. I have been copying over all the tags made by the amazing Creative Guides and just looking at what they have been producing inspired me to take a couple of hours at my work desk and see if I could get motivated. This is the result - a really grungy tag using one of Andy Skinner's new stamps and a small part of one of his new transfer sheets!

Process steps

1. Cover a tag with text papers and glue both the underside and topside of them using decoupage sealer/glue. Take a stencil and mix some white modeling paste with white gesso and  spread it through using a palette knife. 

2. Take some dark colours and paint and rub them over the background and dry.

3. Take white crackle paint and drag some through the stencilled textures with a palette knife. 

4. Paint, rub and spritz the same paints adding quinacridone gold to the mix and layer several washes until you are happy with the results.

5. Stamp the Plague Doctor onto an oddment of left over paper/card, tear and paint then adhere to a small rectangle of grungy background.

6. Gather some elements together to create your design and finish with a rubbing from a transfer sheet to add the word.

There we have a finished tag, the first project I have made in 6 weeks! I don't think I have ever been away from my desk for so long in all the time I have been blogging and that's 9 1/2 years!!!

I hope I can keep some momentum going now but I don't think I am going to be a prolific as I was with creating art but who knows?

I hope you can pop over to the AVJ blog to see he amazing line up we have for you to take a look at. 

A huge thank you to the wonderful Team who have kept me going and inspired me to get myself into gear today.

Thank you to you too for being here.

Have a great weekend.

xxx

Blending media acrylic paints - DecoArt Creative Team

This is a DecoArt Media Tea Encore post
I was working on a tag earlier in the year and wanted to create a soft vintage look with my media acrylic paints. I had covered the greyboard tag with a coat of gesso using a palette knife when an idea came to me - let's try using a distress ink blending tool!

I made up the tag and was so pleased with the results but creating in the moment I hadn't written down any explanation of what I had done nor what I had used but here's what the background looked like.

So I started out experimenting with some card tags for this post. The tags on the left were not primed at all and the tags on the right were given a thin coat of gesso using a palette knife.

These were a mixture of both opaque and semi translucent paints - Titan Buff O, Cerulean Blue ST, Green Gold ST and Yellow Oxide ST although I mixed some Titan Buff with the 3 semi translucent colours which made them more cloudier. I used the rectangular blending tool and foam, taking a small amount of each colour and blending from my craft mat onto the tag, just like you do with distress inks.

These were all translucent colours - Hansa Yellow Light, Cobalt Teal Hue, Phthalo Green/Blue and Cobalt Blue.

In this neutral palette were all opaques - Burnt Umber, Dark Grey V3, Medium Grey V6 and Titan Buff.

What I realised was that I used far too much paint on the blender foam, they moved around a lot and they were easy to use. What I also noticed was that  blending onto a gesso surface was much smoother and created more translucent colours. Mmmmm how could I improve on that?

So what else do we know about acrylic paints? They dry quickly, they are traditionally used by painters using brushes and these artists use sweeping strokes of colours to blend them together. They can be mixed with glazing medium to create more transparent layers which doesn't affect their drying time. Also by experimenting with the blending tool and blending foam I found the pads hold the paint well, give good coverage and are washable so they can be used again.

I cut some card to fit one of my journals and scraped a gesso layer over with a palette knife and left to dry. Gesso has a tooth to it to allow the paint to stick to it so I buffed the first piece with a soft cloth, it certainly gave it a bit more of a satin feel. I also swapped from the larger rectangular tool to the small circular tool and foam. I love the neutral palette so I chose Titan Buff, Medium Grey Value 6, Burnt Umber and Raw Umber.

The card on the left has two coats of titan buff and was rubbed with a soft cloth after each layer had dried. The card on the right has two coats of titan buff mixed 50:50 with glazing medium. When added to paint it gives more transparent layering effects and this just glided on with the foam pad and gives a much softer finish.

For the next layer I chose medium grey value 6. Immediately you can see how thicker the paint stays on the surface even with only one coat as the left hand side is. You need more paint on the foam for it to stick. Whereas the mix of paint and glazing medium on the right hand side has two coats and is still so soft and translucent and you need very little on the foam pad. I can see benefits for using both of these techniques.

For the third colour I chose burnt umber and repeated step two above but I forgot to rub the right hand card with a soft cloth between the layers and the paint beneath gave more tooth for the second coat to hold onto giving a deeper tone.

I finished with Raw Umber applying it mostly round the edges to frame each background. Again I chose not to rub the right hand card between the two layers of paint but I did rub both of them before I took each photo. On the right hand card I also rubbed my finger round the edges when applying the wet paint to blend it to an even softer finish.

So you see the effects I got from raw card, gesso, media paint and glazing medium. You can see some of the card has more texture than others from the gesso. I actually love all the effects.

To summarise there are four different outcomes and effects.
1. Blended acrylics on raw card.
2. Blended acrylics on gesso covered card.
3. Blended acrylics on gessoed card with buffing between layers.
4. Blended acrylics mixed with glazing medium and buffed between layers.

Have fun experimenting with other colours and if you want to see the original tag that started this all off you can find it here.

Here is a project made with one of the above samples. I introduced colour through the stamping and collage elements. You can see I stamped on the tag and painted in some of the swirls on the border.

Top Tip - the foam pads hold onto the paint really well so rub them off on dry paper kitchen towel or another dry cloth before moving on to the next colour.

Tag Friday

It's the fifth Friday in May and we have a Tag Friday post over at A Vintage Journey today showcasing lots of wonderful inspiration tags, so worth taking a look.

Process steps

Layer of gesso using a palette knife.

Dips and drips of sap green and cerulean blue drying between each layer.

Blend over hickory smoke and gathered twigs and splatter with water - dry off water with a piece of kitchen towel.

Spritz lightly with water and heat dry.

Stencil with coffee archival ink.

Stamp the Imperial Rover bicycle with hydrangea, coffee and black archival inks and leave to dry. (I used a stamp platform).

Mask the words and bicycle and stamp over some gears and text from the Tech Trauma set using watering can archival ink.

Add the vintage photo and mini collage with Secret Journey stamped and cut from the Word Up set.

There we have a stamped and stencilled collage of images on a painty/inky distressed background.
I wonder who the cyclist is and where he has been journeying to?

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you get a minute to go walkthrough the amazing line up of fabulous tags over at AVJ, I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

Enjoy your weekend.

Supplies from Country View Crafts

DecoArt Media - Fluid Acrylic Paints - burnt umber, cerulean blue, sap green, titan buff.

DecoArt Media - White Gesso

Stamps - Andy Skinner - Imperial Rover, Tech Trauma, Word Up

Stencil - Andy Skinner - Inspire

Vintage Photo - Tim Holtz - Vintage Photo Strips

Handle With Care - New Andy Skinner products

I have a tag today which has lots of the new Andy Skinner products on it which have just been released (see products list below). 

Process steps

Take a palette knife and drag some white gesso down the tag and dry it. Then blend in some acrylic paints.

Stamp with the new gorgeous distressed wallpaper stamp, I used cobalt blue and watering can archival inks.

Splatter with titanium white and medium grey watery paints.

Stamp some text using a stamp from Andy's older tech trauma set, sand the edges of the tag and blend in ground espresso distress ink.

Stamp the lovely gypsie queen moth and cut out adding some colours to it and also the Fig number.

Take and add some embellishments and you're done.

I really love the shabby distressed wallpaper and to have such a beautiful moth stamp is great

The title is from Andy's mixed media transfers and they rub on beautifully.

Hope you like the new products and have found some inspiration from the tag. I am sharing it on the Andy Skinner blog and there will also be lots of other great projects from other team members there to explore.

Supplies All available from Country View Crafts

Andy Skinner - Creative Expressions Stamps - Distressed Wallpaper and Gypsie Queen.

Andy Skinner - Creative Expressions Mixed Media Transfers - Poe Diversity

Andy Skinner - Illusionary Artists - Tech Trauma

Tim Holtz - Crochet die

DecoArt Media Line - Media Fluid acrylics - Medium Grey Value 6,  Raw Umber, Burnt Sienna, Titanium White, Titan Buff.

DecoArt Media Line - White Gesso